Food and beverage brands lead on Twitter

A recent UK study shows brand mentions for food and beverages more prominent than music, celebrities or news updates. This points to a great opportunity for brands to develop and invest in growing their presence on Twitter. Mentions can be further enhanced by running photo contests and prompting consumers to use hashtags to be automatically entered in sweepstakes. It’s much easier to engage a brand this way then filling out a form online or even worse a mail-in sweepstakes. When integrated with mobile marketing, analytics and contest management tools Twitter can make a great primary means of entry for your next promotion or sweepstakes.

Via WARC Brands in the food and beverage, clothing and retail sectors generate the highest number of direct mentions among Twitter users in the UK, according to a report.

Drawing on a sample of 10,000 tweets made by 1,000 members of Twitter, the social media monitoring firm BrandWatch revealed that 3.6% of posts referred to a brand by name.

“This made brand names almost as prominent as television, film and sport, and more prominent than music, celebrities or news updates,” the firm’s study said.

Members of the food and drinks category yielded 32% of these messages. McDonald’s and Nando’s, the restaurant chains, Tesco, the supermarket giant, and Cadbury, the confectioner, led the charts here.

The technology sector was the subject of 11% of tweets referencing brands. Apple, and its iPhone handset, topped the category rankings, with Samsung, Microsoft and Orange following next.

While 80% of content about technology brands was generated by men, women were behind 89% of tweets in the clothing category and 73% for food and drink.

“Equal numbers of products and services were mentioned, suggesting an even split between secondary and tertiary sectors,” the study said.

“Brands ranged from large, established names including Amazon and Ford to smaller companies such as Azendi and Micro Scooters.”

Looking more broadly, the analysis showed that 38% of posts were “solo tweets”, where the user did not link with other Twitter members using tagging or a direct exchange.

A further 36% were replies to messages, while 22% were retweets, the analysis added.